1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention relate to a technique for managing a setup file of a device driver for an image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, printers have become popular in company offices, and thus many people can easily perform printing. To perform printing from a personal computer (PC), a printer driver that controls printing and generates print data needs to be installed in the PC.
The printer driver is typically prepared for each operating system (OS) of the PC or each printer to be used, and is provided in a storage medium such as a compact disk read only memory (CD-RO) or a floppy disk (FD) packaged with the printer. Further, an administrator can typically acquire the latest version of the printer driver by downloading it from a web site provided by a printers' manufacturer.
Furthermore, an acquired printer driver and setting information to be used for installation are stored in a storage apparatus that is shared via a network, and a storage location is announced to general users so that the general users can use the printer. Based on the announcement, the general users install the printer driver onto the PC according to the information acquired from the storage location.
In recent years, it has become common for image forming apparatuses to deal with a plurality of printer drivers, such as LIPS, LIPSX, PCL, and etc., and thus one image forming apparatus can simultaneously operate the plurality of printer drivers.
Moreover, in recent years, utility software can change an initial state (standard setting value) after the printer driver has been installed, thereby providing a customized printer driver, which can be more conveniently used by the user.
As a conventional method for installing the printer driver, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-092158 discusses a technique where an administrator generates setting information that an installer refers to as a definition file, and then the definition file and the installer are browsed from an execution file (hereinbelow, referred to as a “setup driver” to discriminate from the printer driver).
Further, a plurality of generated setup drivers is uploaded into the image forming apparatus, and then the user can directly install the printer driver from the image forming apparatus. As a conventional technique, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2007-55124 discusses a technique where, when a resource of a network information peripheral device is changed, the change of the resource is automatically provided to the user who manages the resource and is affected by the change of the resource, such as an information processing apparatus.
However, even when the administrator generates the setup driver and notifies the users, all users do not always install the printer driver.
According to the conventional method for notifying the user of the resource change, since the user who has accessed the image forming apparatus is notified, a user who has downloaded the printer driver and a user who has not are not discriminated from each other. Thus, the resource change is also notified to the user who has not downloaded the printer driver.
As a solution, a method for memorizing users to whom a setup driver has been delivered in the image forming apparatus may be used, and notifying the users who have actually downloaded the setup driver among those users.
However, the users may include the user who has received a notification of the resource change by a method different from a usual method and has happened to download the printer driver. Since such a user is not a user that has been memorized (i.e., a user whose notification address is not registered in the image forming apparatus), the user cannot receive the notification of the resource change by the above-described method.
As described above, an appropriate system has not been established with which the user using the image forming apparatus can download the setup file of the device driver for the image forming apparatus.